Remaining scanning benefits if Public Safety is encrypted...

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NeedtoKnow2

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I'm still debating a scanner purchase along the lines of the Uniden HP-2.

The purpose of this purchase would be to supplement preps for a local or widespread disaster or threat to my community.

However, I recently learned from the Emergency Communications Director of our rural county that within the next 1 or 2 years they will be implementing an encrypted system, with full implementation w/i 5 years. This covers all county sheriff, fire, and EMS.

So my question is:

What are the benefits of a scanner used for the above stated purpose if most local public safety comms are encrypted? Are there related benefits that other agencies or firms such as utilities, hospitals, public works, transportation organizations, trucking, and others provide during disasters or other threatening events?

Are there scanner users out there who believe their scanners are still useful for this purpose DESPITE most of their local public safety coms being encrypted? Please elaborate.
 

jonwienke

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Not everything will be encrypted, at least not for long. Washington DC tried that, and after some fiascos with Metro fires learned that you can't have interoperability with multiple agencies on encrypted channels. They may encrypt fire and EMS, until people die because mutual aid calls went unanswered due to going out on an encrypted channel another agency couldn't monitor, and then they will probably turn encryption off for at least fire and EMS. Also, there is a difference between a digital system that supports encryption, and one that is fully encrypted. 100% encryption is pretty rare for the reasons I just mentioned.

That said, scanners are still useful even if all public safety comms are encrypted. SKYWARN severe weather spotters are not encrypted. School bus and transportation companies are good sources of info for road conditions--they usually have to call dispatch if there is an accident that delays them. In the winter, hearing snowplow drivers is a good way to keep updated on road conditions. So a scanner has significant utility even if public safety comms are 100% encrypted, which they generally aren't.
 

NeedtoKnow2

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That is a rational answer, Jon. I'm learning that many of the complaints about encryption are from hobbyists who miss the "entertainment" provided by public safety communications. Those of us who want to use scanners as an "information gathering tool" during emergencies still have significant benefits from it.

Getting a bit philosophical, there is often too much reliance on the public sector to solve our problems and give us information. The likelihood that there is a preponderance of unencrypted communications from private, non-governmental, or non-public safety organizations that provides similarly useful information shouldn't be taken lightly.
 

bob550

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Some thirty years ago I was able to monitor DEA and FBI communications, in the clear! Back then, I also heard Air Force One and Executive One Foxtrot (FLOTUS) phone patches on HF, also in the clear. Good luck attempting that today! Those were the "good old days".

The moral here is that everything changes. Sometimes that change is not necessarily for the better, at least from a monitoring perspective. Most likely, thirty years from now, some of us will be looking back and calling 2017 "the good old days".
 

kayn1n32008

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Not everything will be encrypted, at least not for long. Washington DC tried that, and after some fiascos with Metro fires learned that you can't have interoperability with multiple agencies on encrypted channels.

This is just entirely wrong. Encryption does not prevent interop. Ego's prevent encrypted interop.

They may encrypt fire and EMS, until people die because mutual aid calls went unanswered due to going out on an encrypted channel another agency couldn't monitor...

Pissing contests prevent encrypted interop. With the advent of wide area radio networks and OTAR along with inter-agency cooperation, it is possible to have 100% encrypted systems. It does how ever require agency buy in, and cooperate.

Having a 100% encrypted radio system does not mean that interop is not be possible.

100% encryption is pretty rare for the reasons I just mentioned.

100% encryption is rare because different agencies can not check their egos at the door when it comes to key sharing and key planning.

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7846

The above system, while still being deployed utilizes 100% AES256 encryption for ALL users.

A quick count of the EDACS that it replaces shows:

1 EMS user(the province operates a province wide ambulance system)
6 Municipal police service users
1 Transit police service user
10 RCMP detachments(9 municipal detachments and 1 freeway patrol)
10 Fire department users

ALL of these users will be encrypted once roll out is completed on the P25/phase 2 replacement system. this includes all interop talkgroups.

It does take a very high level of cooperation, and having the system operated by a separate entity from all users likely helps
 

dmg1969

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I can understand encrypting police traffic (of course, us hobbyists hate it), but what reason is there really to encrypt fire and EMS (at least not dispatch)? I don't think the fact that there's a fire at 123 Main Street Anywhere USA or there's someone having a stroke at 1313 Mockingbird Lane requires encryption. If you want to encrypt ambulance to hospital communications...OK, I guess. It's not they give names and social security numbers over the air, so there really are no reason under HIPPA.

In all honesty, I think encryption is oversold to agencies by vendors. Law Enforcement...OK. But soup to nuts encryption on everything? I think that's purely to make more $.
 

kayn1n32008

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I can understand encrypting police traffic (of course, us hobbyists hate it), but what reason is there really to encrypt fire and EMS (at least not dispatch)?

I am not entirely sure what the reasoning is for the particular system I posted about, but a good guess is that they wanted ALL their comms secure from outside eavesdropping, and it also keeps from having their comms streamed online.

In all honesty, I think encryption is oversold to agencies by vendors. Law Enforcement...OK. But soup to nuts encryption on everything? I think that's purely to make more $.

Every vendor offers some type of encryption for free, so the argument that it is to make more money does not hold up.

I'm pretty sure the encryption requirement for the system I linked in my post was from the system owners, not pushed on them from the vendors.

When a system has thousands of radios deployed, the per unit cost is likely significantly less than if each agency bought their radios separately, or they were bought a few at a time.
 

jonwienke

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This is just entirely wrong. Encryption does not prevent interop. Ego's prevent encrypted interop.

Pissing contests prevent encrypted interop. With the advent of wide area radio networks and OTAR along with inter-agency cooperation, it is possible to have 100% encrypted systems. It does how ever require agency buy in, and cooperate.

Having a 100% encrypted radio system does not mean that interop is not be possible.

100% encryption is rare because different agencies can not check their egos at the door when it comes to key sharing and key planning.

The problem arises when the scope of the interop is greater than the scope of the system. Sharing keys becomes much more complex, and if anyone drops the ball during a scheduled key change, then an entire agency's radios go dark. That's what happened in DC--there was a fire in a Metro tunnel, and DCFD couldn't communicate with Metro's people because someone forgot to give the Metro people the updated key. In theory, 100% encrypted interop is possible, but in practice, encrypted interop causes more problems than it solves.
 

jonwienke

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Every vendor offers some type of encryption for free, so the argument that it is to make more money does not hold up.

Running encryption is always more expensive, because you have additional man-hours required to periodically generate new keys and update the radios.
 

surfacemount

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Most end users don't want to know a dang thing about the radio system. Turn the one knob one, maybe flip the other from main to a 'back' or 'records' channel, and that's almost too much. No, you can't hang your keys off the antenna. No, it won't work if it isn't charged.

So, it's 'easier' to just flip the Big Switch and make it all ENC.

I think it's terrible, and does a great disservice to the community at large, but I am in the minority on this site on the topic.
 

PrivatelyJeff

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I don’t understand why they would ever change the the key. You could just set it to password and lockout all the scanners easily.
 

crazyboy

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The problem arises when the scope of the interop is greater than the scope of the system. Sharing keys becomes much more complex, and if anyone drops the ball during a scheduled key change, then an entire agency's radios go dark. That's what happened in DC--there was a fire in a Metro tunnel, and DCFD couldn't communicate with Metro's people because someone forgot to give the Metro people the updated key. In theory, 100% encrypted interop is possible, but in practice, encrypted interop causes more problems than it solves.

So if the interop is greater than the scope of the system does it matter what encryption is running on the system, because the mutual aid is not going to have the system in their radios anyway. Hello hundreds of nationwide interop channels.

Running encryption is always more expensive, because you have additional man-hours required to periodically generate new keys and update the radios.

There's system admins that are already working 40hrs a week maintaining the system, soooo yup just part of their schedule and not as time consuming as make it seem to be.

I don’t understand why they would ever change the the key. You could just set it to password and lockout all the scanners easily.

For increased security in case of key compromise.
 

paulears

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It's rare for the UK to be ahead of the US, but our emergency services went encrypted and none of the issues mentioned here have surfaced at all. Our problem is simply cost. It's been over budget since inception and the annual costs are huge. The system allows our police, fire and ambulance to run on the same system, but separately, and then if they need to to talk to each other, this is a simple process that can be implanted by the Police, being the senior service on the system, on request. In addition, the Coastguard and even St John Ambulance (a private volunteer organisation) get access when required simply by being issued with the handsets and permissions enabled. The encryption worked fine, and the radios, called 'terminals' have been pretty reliable, suffering no worse than the older analogue ones' it replaced. The old analogue systems were centred on Police stations, for local comms, with remote site systems for county wide comms - and airwave simply used these same locations for their equipment so coverage even into the lower level areas of the buildings works pretty well.

The system is being retired for cost reasons, and the new system uses spare capacity on one of the national cellphone networks. The snag being these site are not on Police stations, and the amount of steel and rebar in the cell areas of many means ordinary cellphones don't work very well. Nobody yet knows the solution to this. Encryption has never been an issue whatsoever, and when your systems encrypt, which they surely will do soon, like us, that's the end for scanner users.
 

Project25_MASTR

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It's rare for the UK to be ahead of the US, but our emergency services went encrypted and none of the issues mentioned here have surfaced at all. Our problem is simply cost. It's been over budget since inception and the annual costs are huge. The system allows our police, fire and ambulance to run on the same system, but separately, and then if they need to to talk to each other, this is a simple process that can be implanted by the Police, being the senior service on the system, on request. In addition, the Coastguard and even St John Ambulance (a private volunteer organisation) get access when required simply by being issued with the handsets and permissions enabled. The encryption worked fine, and the radios, called 'terminals' have been pretty reliable, suffering no worse than the older analogue ones' it replaced. The old analogue systems were centred on Police stations, for local comms, with remote site systems for county wide comms - and airwave simply used these same locations for their equipment so coverage even into the lower level areas of the buildings works pretty well.

The system is being retired for cost reasons, and the new system uses spare capacity on one of the national cellphone networks. The snag being these site are not on Police stations, and the amount of steel and rebar in the cell areas of many means ordinary cellphones don't work very well. Nobody yet knows the solution to this. Encryption has never been an issue whatsoever, and when your systems encrypt, which they surely will do soon, like us, that's the end for scanner users.

If I remember correctly, there is a common system in use in the UK for public safety. The same cannot be said in the US. Yes, there are statewide systems and even a handful covering multiple states (which on their own are great feats of collaboration). However, come somewhere like Texas and you'll find there is no such beast. Your common (major) systems are TxWARN (the largest) covering the central coastal area, GATRRS which is controlled by the City of Austin and currently having 3 main zones(Austin/Wilco/Bastrop/Lee, Middle Rio Grande and Western Counties), Permian Basin, and Fort Worth Regional. Then you have the smaller (not so regional) systems like Bell County, City of Lubbock, City of Abilene, City of San Angelo, San Antonio, El Paso, Parker County, City of Waco, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit)...this list can continue on but for brevity we'll stop here. There are some planned mergers (like Permian Basin's absorption by GATRRS) but it's a mess of individual systems spread out among the VHF and 7/800 MHz spectrum. A literal nightmare for interoperability, especially when encryption becomes involved (which is why it's becoming common for interoperability talk groups to be strapped clear though).

I don’t understand why they would ever change the the key. You could just set it to password and lockout all the scanners easily.

The theory is, any given key can be cracked with enough time. Especially once you put the technology of parallel computing and crypto-currency mining together.
 

paulears

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Surely with the funding for all these separate systems coming from Government, there is some sense? This sounds very similar to our old systems before digital Airwave. Each Police, Fire and Ambulance service had it's own system, often supplied by common manufactures following a national bandplan - but this didn't work very well here. My County, Suffolk, borders Norfolk - and athe nearest town in Norfolk is ten miles away. My Police could travel into Norfolk, perhaps chasing somebody in a car, but had no facility to talk to the Norfolk County control operators, and while for a short distance they could talk to their control - 50 miles away, coverage into the new County was poor. The same thing happened in reverse. Police had a totally different radio allocation to the Ambulance - totally different radios in the vehicles. Fire were similar to the Police, in the same band - but had no cross service facility. Our Coastguard had only marine channels. Then a common system was enabled at huge cost - all the Police, Fire and Ambulance re-equipped to the normal system.

I do understand that the sheer size and quantity of emergency services in the US dwarfs ours, but it can be done if there is a will, and of course funding.
 

SteveSimpkin

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It's rare for the UK to be ahead of the US, but our emergency services went encrypted and none of the issues mentioned here have surfaced at all. Our problem is simply cost. It's been over budget since inception and the annual costs are huge. The system allows our police, fire and ambulance to run on the same system, but separately, and then if they need to to talk to each other, this is a simple process that can be implanted by the Police, being the senior service on the system, on request. In addition, the Coastguard and even St John Ambulance (a private volunteer organisation) get access when required simply by being issued with the handsets and permissions enabled. The encryption worked fine, and the radios, called 'terminals' have been pretty reliable, suffering no worse than the older analogue ones' it replaced. The old analogue systems were centred on Police stations, for local comms, with remote site systems for county wide comms - and airwave simply used these same locations for their equipment so coverage even into the lower level areas of the buildings works pretty well.

The system is being retired for cost reasons, and the new system uses spare capacity on one of the national cellphone networks. The snag being these site are not on Police stations, and the amount of steel and rebar in the cell areas of many means ordinary cellphones don't work very well. Nobody yet knows the solution to this. Encryption has never been an issue whatsoever, and when your systems encrypt, which they surely will do soon, like us, that's the end for scanner users.

Well to be fair, the United States is, in some respects, more of a loose collection of very different sub-countries with separate State, County and City Public Safety jurisdictions and budgets. I sometimes have the feeling that the various countries of Europe have more in common with each other than the "United" States do. It also has almost 5 times the population and about 40 times the surface area to contend with.

As to listening to public services (police, fire, EMS, etc) and private businesses, the technical issues are irrelevant since my understanding is that it is illegal to use scanners to listen to licensed private services such as the police and taxi radio transmissions and other prohibited or private broadcasts not intended for the public in the U.K.
 

paulears

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It used to be - but our version of the FCC, OFCOM, now actually mention scanners in their information, and merely suggest people realise listening to things that you perhaps shouldn't, might not be OK - but they then make all the non-emergency services licences publicly available - as in anyone can find out the licence frequencies, CTCSS tones and even digital talk groups and colour codes from a central register. It lists who is allocated the frequencies and the locations the base stations and links are at and even the names and contact information for licensees. Pretty well it's now OK to listen to any of the available services. They are still very hot on internet rebroadcasting of any of these services though - so while it's OK in Holland to put Schipol airport on the net - you cannot find Heathrow or Gatwick, and a few people who have done it got an official knock on the door and told to stop.
 

mule1075

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It used to be - but our version of the FCC, OFCOM, now actually mention scanners in their information, and merely suggest people realise listening to things that you perhaps shouldn't, might not be OK - but they then make all the non-emergency services licences publicly available - as in anyone can find out the licence frequencies, CTCSS tones and even digital talk groups and colour codes from a central register. It lists who is allocated the frequencies and the locations the base stations and links are at and even the names and contact information for licensees. Pretty well it's now OK to listen to any of the available services. They are still very hot on internet rebroadcasting of any of these services though - so while it's OK in Holland to put Schipol airport on the net - you cannot find Heathrow or Gatwick, and a few people who have done it got an official knock on the door and told to stop.
Oh if you look you can find Heathrow And Gatwick online.Listen to them every weekend.

Sent from my SM-S907VL using Tapatalk
 

SteveSimpkin

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It used to be - but our version of the FCC, OFCOM, now actually mention scanners in their information, and merely suggest people realise listening to things that you perhaps shouldn't, might not be OK - but they then make all the non-emergency services licences publicly available - as in anyone can find out the licence frequencies, CTCSS tones and even digital talk groups and colour codes from a central register. It lists who is allocated the frequencies and the locations the base stations and links are at and even the names and contact information for licensees. Pretty well it's now OK to listen to any of the available services. They are still very hot on internet rebroadcasting of any of these services though - so while it's OK in Holland to put Schipol airport on the net - you cannot find Heathrow or Gatwick, and a few people who have done it got an official knock on the door and told to stop.

If I understood what you are saying, it is still "technically" illegal to listen to non-broadcast transmissions where you are not an intended recipient (see link below) but this is not really enforced by OFCOM.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/ass...7/Guidance-on-Receive-Only-Radio-Scanners.pdf
 
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